'We twinned our Yorkshire village with an Incan citadel in Peru'

Cobblestoned Haworth was once home to the Brontes - but is also twinned with the historic Incan citadel of Machu Picchu

"The mayor came and picked us up in some little old banger that had been confiscated from the drugs trade. He had taken this car from a cartel and used it to get around town," Pauline Brown remembers.

As introductions to a country go, the first trip Ms Brown and Rita Verity took from Haworth in West Yorkshire to Peru 20 years ago was certainly a memorable one.

The pair had travelled to South America as part of the twinning process they had both kickstarted between their cobblestoned village, which was once home to the Bronte sisters, and the 15th Century Incan citadel of Machu Picchu, a world famous Unesco World Heritage Site often referred to as the "lost city of the Incas".

While one might struggle in Machu Picchu to find a pint of Timothy Taylor's - the well-known beer brewed in Keighley, just up the road from Haworth - the two places do, perhaps surprisingly, have a lot in common.

They share a textile heritage, a damp mountainous landscape and they both have a famous valley railway line: the Sacred Valley in Machu Picchu and the Worth Valley Railway in Haworth.

It was from these common foundations that Ms Brown and Ms Verity launched the twinning process - and they have never looked back.

Ms Brown says it all started at Ms Verity's Fairtrade shop in Haworth.

"I went in there, I didn't even know her, and she said, 'I've got this idea, I'd like try and do it. I'm going to go in a few weeks, why don't you come?

"I said, 'I can't afford it', but then I had my injections before she did, so we met a Fairtrade person on the way out and travelled up the Sacred Valley."

Pauline Brown and Rita Verity first had the idea to twin Haworth with the Peruvian site in 2005

On their first trip to Peru, Ms Brown and Ms Verity met the mayor of Aguas Calientes, the closest inhabited town to Machu Picchu, and visited a street children's project and a local school.

It was in Anta, another nearby town, that they were taken on their memorable tour in the "little old banger" which had once been used for nefarious purposes.

"The mayor took us to an orphanage, we went to the hospital. We got to find out about the community," Ms Brown recounts.

"He took us to lots of places, talked about all the potatoes and growing – there are 4,000 different types."

On their return, Ms Brown and Ms Verity began setting up links with Peruvian representatives in the UK with the hope of eventually officially twinning Haworth and Machu Picchu, which is believed to have once been a summer retreat for the Incan emperor Pachacuti and his family.

After meeting with their MP, John Grogan, they were invited to Parliament, where Grogan had set up an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peru.

"We went along and Rita gave a little speech," Ms Brown explains.

"At the end, she said, 'If anybody wants to come to our lovely village, you're all welcome - and we even have alpacas'.

"We invited the ambassador and his wife and they came up and were lovely. They had three days here," says Ms Brown.

Machu Picchu is a 15th Century Incan citadel in Peru and is now uninhabited

However, it still took four years for the twinning agreement to finally get signed off in Peru.

In 2009, the link between Haworth and Machu Picchu - which is perched thousands of feet high on a mountain ridge and which is now uninhabited - officially joined a select group of twins linking Britain and some surprising places.

Those include Bolton in Lancashire being twinned with Le Mans, the French city famous for its 24-hour motor racing event; the Wiltshire town of Swindon, which is linked with not only Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but also the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels; and the Scottish town of Dull which is twinned with Boring in Oregon.

Since 2009, Haworth's twinning group has been responsible for multiple projects, meaning even closer ties with Machu Picchu and its surrounding area.

Those include opticians from Haworth travelling to Peru to provide healthcare, books being sent for the local schools and money raised for charities.

"We've sold cards that were done by Peruvian people just after the floods. Cafe Direct make coffee from Peru and have made a special Machu Picchu one," Ms Brown explains.

"And then there are the letters to and from the primary schools."

The process to twin Haworth and Machu Picchu was officially completed in 2009, when all the paperwork was finally completed

In 2019, the group celebrated their first official decade of twinning with a party catered by famous Peruvian chef Martin Morales.

"When we had the celebration in 2019, we wanted the food to be Peruvian and then Yorkshire puddings," says Ms Verity.

"I couldn't find a Peruvian chef, so I asked at the embassy and within about half an hour I got a phone call from Martin Morales who had Peruvian restaurants in London.

"He was absolutely amazing, really wonderful.

"He said, 'I would love to help, I would love to come' and he did demonstrations of food, but he also brought his aunty who lives in Brighouse [in West Yorkshire] and she's now on our group."

Meanwhile, through Mr Morales, Ms Brown and Ms Verity say they have connected with a charity called Amantani which supports children and young people by selling handmade bracelets.

Pauline Brown has written children's books about Haworth which she hopes to take to the children in Machu Picchu

For the future, Ms Brown and Ms Verity say they hope to pass on their connections to the next generation in Haworth.

With that in mind, ahead of the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the twinning, they are calling for the help of a much-loved Peruvian hero among young people: Paddington Bear.

"Obviously Paddington's from Peru and it seemed really appropriate to involve children," says Ms Verity.

The town will celebrate during Fairtrade Fortnight - from 22 September to 5 October this year - with a screening of the latest Paddington film, a bring your own picnic (marmalade sandwiches optional), and a quiz in the shop windows up Haworth's Main Street.

Ms Verity says: "The next plan is for the young people to completely understand what we're doing and to want to carry on the legacy."

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